Monday, June 10, 2013

Stopping Grip Slip: MacGyver Edition

I have been secretly building up a single speed mountain bike for the last couple months. Will it be fun? Keep reading to find out. But building it sure has been fun. When it came time for grips, I picked up a pair of Ergon grips at BSR for pretty cheap.

One problem was that the grip part was slipping from the bar end. This was a little frustrating, as you can imagine. Here's how I solved it:

I have some old lock on grips laying around, and popped off the lock ring, with hopes of using it on the Ergon grips.

Ergon grips, with lock ring

I trimmed back the grip material, as well as notching out the plastic underneath to match the old lock on grips:

The cut Ergon grips

Here you can see the old lock on grips, on top, and the Ergon grips, on the bottom. The right one has been trimmed so that the lock ring would fit:

Comparing the Ergon and lock on grips

The bastardized version of the two grips:

How did it work? Fantastic actually! I have taken it for a couple rides on Marshal Mesa and it was solid. It's a good thing too, turns out you really crank on your bars when you only have one gear.